Not all pigtails and inkwells

I suppose it seems the whole history of my introduction to the world of love came from school. This is not the case. Being the well rounded individual I am, I spent time going to church, though it seemed somewhat wrong to be wondering what it would be like to kiss the prettiest girl in Sunday school; and also spent time in the Scouts, though, in those days it was boys only, and even if I was that way inclined, the troop leaders were not unknown to my parents, shall we say.

But in the summer, my family would pack up and go on holiday. And as most folks are inclined to do because of some innate lemming-like compulsion, we often headed for remote forest areas far from civilisation at the height of the summer bushfire season. Okay, they were usually near large bodies of water, often the ocean, and, living on an island, it's not really difficult to find somewhere isolated in such an unpopulated country. However the intelligence of such behaviour remains questionable.

Sometimes we would go with other families, and I recall the year between primary school and high school, the whole family went and camped at some kind of Christian Fellowship summer camp, full of other happy hippie Christian families. My father was friends with more than one minister of progressive, modern christian churches. I suppose being a Vietnam veteran he had particular reason to seek out assurances of some kind. And they were the kind of churches where you were more likely to find bearded man strumming a guitar singing a folky hymn on a Sunday morning rather than a furrowed brow with kinetic eyebrows preaching about hellfire and punishment. They were good people, I suppose, and a safer environment I can't imagine, really.

So this was where I met the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was Dutch, her surname was Van Der... something with only one syllable I can't quite recall. She was tall, taller than me by a head, though it didn't take much back then at age twelve. She was slim, but not skinny, "lithe" I suppose is the word I would use now, though I was unaware of its existence at the time. Her eyes were strikingly pale blue, and her nose was pointy, but not big, and slightly upturned, which somehow made her almost unreal, like a fairytale picture. She had tanned, smooth skin, a golden brown colour like the filling of a Caramello koala, and tiny hairs on her arms and legs bleached blonde from hours in the sun with her outdoorsy family. They were often driving in their Land Cruiser four wheel drive, camping and hiking, with her brother, who was a little less than my age, and a little more than my height; her mother, a weathered woman with smiling eyes, who clearly once was as beautiful as her daughter; and her father, a scruffy ball of whiskers and hair, who wore sandals and socks, and fixed you with hard grey eyes, even as he laughed and joked.

But she captured my attention. She held it the whole two weeks of that camp. Almost. Each day there were organised activities as well as ample opportunity for free time to wander the beach, or the bush trails through the dunes, or the small brackish lakes behind them. One day I signed up for a photography group, because she was going along, only to slink out, embarrassed when I discovered to my horror everyone had been expected to bring their own camera. I didn't even have an instamatic, while everyone else had professional looking SLR cameras with interchangeable lenses and straps for their neck and cases and gadgets. She didn't see me slip out the back of the meeting hall where they were getting their introductory talk. I was glad, because my face so red it was as though I'd been sunburnt. Not that I had any reason to feel as foolish as I did, there was no way I could have known, and I realised later, no way my parents would have encouraged me to go, had they realised.

So, I spent the rest of the day scuffing around the edge of the camps, going for walks, swimming with my brother, who had become friends with the Dutch girl's brother, and generally trying not to think too much about the mornings events. Eventually she came down to the lake where our brothers were jumping off rocks into a deep section of the lake and spread out her towel. Even the way she moved was graceful and self assured, nothing like the gangly girls I knew at school. She was older than us, I was twelve, my brother thirteen, hers at the tail end of eleven. But she was fifteen, which seemed a lifetime away to me. And like a queen, she was distant and untouchable. But I suppose I was infatuated with her. Though I wanted to just watch her all afternoon until dinner time, I realised even then how creepy that would have been. So I wandered off.

I saw her at dinner, she was with her family, and my brother was eating with them in the communal dining hall that also functioned as a recreation hall, emergency shelter, theatre, indoor sport centre, and any other large roof, as required. I sat with my family, my younger sister babbling incessantly with some equally cherubic seven year old girl I had learned to ignore; my older sister eating quietly and reading, she was about the same age as the Dutch princess; and my parents, who were chatting to a friendly couple seated at the next table with their kids.

After dinner, the kids all ran off playing some chaotic game of "hide and seek and destroy", depending who you asked, while the parents settled in for a few drinks as the sky began to darken. I was caught up in the game, and running around hiding and seeking and sometimes destroying when I ran down a trail toward the lake. The game seemed to have no set boundary, and while it was light, most kids over ten or so were allowed to go where they pleased. I found my way back to the rocks at the lake we had been at that afternoon, and began to climb over them, wondering where the Dutch girl had gone, I hadn't seen her since just after dinner.

I picked my way almost to the top of the rocks and heard a low voice. I didn't think it was a word, more of a muffled sound like someone would make with their mouth closed. A strange kind of groaning hum. I looked over the rocks down to a small beach on the other side, and saw my brother and the Dutch girl laying on the sand, mouths pressed against each other. My eyes widened. I felt suddenly sick. I thought I was going to lose my dinner as I climbed back down the rock and walked back in a kind of daze to where my tent was. He couldn't have known, I hadn't mentioned it to anyone, why would I?

It was just a crush, after all. Now I knew why they called it that.